Chix Chat on Film review: A true monster movie

Rating: Null/10 (13 July 2013)

What I really want to do is write about Idris Elba (Stacker Pentacost) and how his walk is poetry in motion, and that I could stare at him for the 131 minutes running time of this film with his commanding presence while gracing us with confidence and style, but that would be unfair, since I should discuss Pacific Rim. This film reminded me of the old Godzilla monster movies akin to the likes of Godzilla versus Megalon. Those films always had the populous running for their lives while Tokyo was perpetually being destroyed, but the update to the tale is that the origin of the monster attacks does not come from nuclear fallout. This film was not as campy as the early Godzilla films, but there was a healthy level of cheesiness, although played very straight with Charlie Day (Dr. Newton Geiszler) as the only comic relief, which is somewhat odd since he plays a scientist. He actually looks the part, but if he ever wants to be taken seriously in a role he has to change his voice inflections and tone, which is very comedic. If all the English and Australian actors can do it I'm sure he can. This film was primarily driven by the special effects, since going in there was little doubt as to how the story would end. The last film that I saw that had a truly surprising end was Cabin in the Woods, I digress. The special effects were most noteworthy because the scale of the jaegers and the kaijus was strikingly convincing. With their movements, when the fights broke out and when buildings were destroyed, I simply marveled at the fact that these creations looked remarkably real. I'm not sure why the notion that a tall wall will keep anything out but it was yet again tested in this film, but again the scale was amazing. The kaiju unfortunately were never shown much clearer in the film than what was seen in the trailer, when they appeared it was either dark, raining, shown as a television broadcast or they were underwater all of which were distorting factors. We did get a nice variety though, with similarities to a turtle, gorilla, and a pterodactyl. This was a testosterone filled ride, there were only two females with any dialogue in the entire film and one of them was quite masculine. It seemed that the target audience was tween and teenaged young men who would get a kick out of the fight scenes, there was a miniscule love story but not enough to make this film a female fan favorite. It was entertaining so I give it an amber light.